My First. . .

MEMORY: Of Prestfield Road, Whitefield, where I lived. It would be about 1958 and I was with my brother Steve and two girls riding around on three-wheeled bikes with a boot on the back, playing dodgems.

HOLIDAY: A family holiday in a big green canvas tent, like something you put over the back of a wagon, in Abergele, Wales.

JOB: I had a summer job in a suitcase factory in Whitefield, putting rivets in the bottom of suitcases. It was ten bob and all the rivets I could eat.

PET: A long-haired Alsatian called Zena. I got a dog and a bible for my 10th birthday. I cried my eyes out because I had only got a pup and wanted a big dog. But she was like a horse when she grew up and I was proud as Punch.

HOME: My first home away from the family was a flat I shared with a bloke called Dave Myers in Prestwich. We called it Typhoid Towers.

CAR: A Mini. It was absolutely brilliant. I bashed the hell out of it but it kept on going.

RECORD: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood by The Animals. I've still got it and I'm in the process of transferring my vinyl collection, which has been stored away, on to CD.

ALCOHOLIC DRINK: Cider. It was the only "never again" I have stuck to. I was about 17 and my mum and dad had gone away. I was at Rochdale Art College and we had a band on -- The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. I was drunk on cider so I don't remember much about it.

LOVE: Zena, my dog. I was devoted to her. A close second was a girl called Glen Murray, an American lass at college. It broke my heart when she went back to America.

ECCENTRIC BEHAVIOUR: I went to boarding school and got banned from going into the dining room for breakfast. So seven of us got all the tables and chairs at 3am and took them to the top of some trees. There were about 20 tables strategically placed in the trees, complete with salt, sugar and milk.

BLACK PUDDING COMPETITION: About 10 years ago, in the time of the great Jimmy Cunliffe, who was landlord of the Corner Pins, Stubbins.